Lt. Gov. Patty Judge

DES MOINES – Lt. Governor Patty Judge will attend the ribbon cutting ceremony for Go Daddy’s new facility in Hiawatha July 8.

Go Daddy is the world’s largest Web hosting provider and domain name registrar. The company expects to hire approximately 60 people almost immediately and as many as 200 over the next year to help Go Daddy serve its rapidly growing customer base, which now exceeds 8.1 million people worldwide.

The ribbon-cutting will be at 2:15 p.m. at 1 Parsons Dr., Hiawatha.

Alliant Energy and Iowa’s consumer advocate have a $164.8 million-per-year difference of opinion when it comes to the utility’s request to raise electric rates.

Alliant’s Interstate Power & Light utility filed an electric rate case in March seeking to raise rates by $163 million annually, or about 14 percent overall.

The utility’s residential customers have already begun paying an 11.7 percent interim rate hike.

The Office of Consumer Advocate said Wednesday, July 7 that it will ask the Iowa Utilities Board to instead order Alliant to lower customers rates by $1.8 million per year overall.

Acting Consumer Advocate Jennifer Easler said the consumer office is also asking that the Iowa Utilities Board reject the utility’s request to have an automatic transmission cost adjustment clause, or tracker, placed on customer’s bills.

“Having a tracker just doesn’t give them any incentive to control costs,” Easler said.

Alliant’s transmission costs have climbed rapidly since the company sold its transmission system to ITC Midwest in December 2007. Easler said that roughly $48 million of the $163 million annual increase Alliant is seeking are higher transmission costs.

The consumer advocate asked the board to lower the transmission-related portion of the increase by $30.9 million.

“We are asking the (utilities) board to hold the company to the assurance it made in the sale of transmission assets that customers would be held harmless,” Easler said.

Some of the other major differences between the consumer advocate and Alliant include the test year Alliant chose to use in calculating the rate increase.

Easler said Alliant chose to use 2009, a year in which summer temperatures were much cooler than normal, resulting in lower electricity sales. The consumer advocate says that using a more normal year would lower Alliant’s rate increase needs by $31.5 million

In presenting its case to customers, Alliant has emphasized its $468 million investment in the Whispering Willow-east Wind Farm in Franklin County and a $188 million investment in environmental improvements at its Lansing Unit 4 coal-burning power plant in Lansing.

The consumer advocate wants Alliant’s rate increase lowered some $10 million per year because it exceeded the cost cap established for construction of the Whispering Willow Wind Farm by about $50 million, Easler said.

Alliant has said it’s willing to negotiate a settlement  with the consumer advocate office that would tap regulatory reserve accounts to substantially reduce the initial rate increase. The accounts were set up with proceeds from Alliant’s sale of its Iowa transmission assets and its majority stake in the Duane Arnold Energy Center.

The proposed “cost management plan” would reduce the average increase of about 14 percent to aprpoximately 6 percent compared with 2009 bills, but its benefits would be temporary.

Easler said the consumer advocate’s office in general doesn’t believe Alliant is offering consumers a good deal by tapping regulatory reserve accounts to pay for rising transmission costs.

“These accounts were set aside to defray the costs of future investments, mainly in (electric) generation,” Easler said. “Our preference would be to use that to fund another capital asset, so that consumers would have the benefits over the life of that asset.”

Kirkwood Community College will be administering a survey of about 300 Corridor employers in the first quarter of 2011 for an assessment of employers’ skills and employment needs.

Skills 2014, a follow up to the Skills 2006 and Skills 2010 surveys, will be released in a community report in April. The study will involve a two-part survey conducted between January and March 2011.

The first part of the survey project will ask employers to identify current work force numbers, anticipated replacement and projected new job growth by using standard occupational clusters. The second part of the survey will include a series of questions regarding skill development needs as well as trends in training and education programs.

The study will replicate the Skills 2006 and Skills 2010 surveys and will provide comparable data over a 10-year period.

Some of the goals of the Skills 2014 surveys include determining replacement and new job growth projections occupation  and industry sector, identifying desired educational levels and where any skill gaps exist.

The surveys also will identify if employers are investing in training, determine what factors are impeding growth, and find out if organizations are taking advantage of internships or job shadowing programs.

Vermeer Corporation is based in Pella. More about Vermeer from this Edge Business Magazine article (2006)

Excerpt:

… President Obama has appointed the following individuals to the President’s Export Council:

Mary Andringa, Appointee for Member, President’s Export Council
Mary Vermeer Andringa is currently President and Chief Executive Officer of Vermeer Corporation, an international organization that manufactures agricultural, construction, environmental, and industrial equipment. She previously served as President and Chief Operating Officer, and began her career with the company as a market researcher in 1982.  Early in her career Ms. Andringa taught in Iowa City public schools and later became director of the Mustard Seed Preschool in Omaha, Nebraska.  Presently, she serves as director for Herman Miller Company; vice chair of the National Association of Manufacturing; is a member of the Board of Councilors for the China-US Center for Sustainable Development; and a trustee for the Fuller Theological Seminary. She also serves on the Central College Board as trustee emeritus.

See complete July 7 White House press release: President Obama Provides Progress Report on National Export Initiative, Announces Members of the President’s Export Council

Wells Fargo & Co. on Wednesday announced plans to restructure its Wells Fargo Financial subsidiary, eliminating 3,800 jobs and closing all 638 of its locations including offices in Cedar Rapids, Coralville, Dubuque and Waterloo.

The number of people employed by the four Eastern Iowa Wells Fargo Financial locations is not known.

Wells Fargo said 2,800 of the 14,000 positions at Wells Fargo Financial will be eliminated during the next 60 days, and 1,000 positions will likely be eliminated during the next 12 months.

The San Francisco-based financial services company said the remainder of the team members will be reassigned to other Wells Fargo businesses.

Wells Fargo said the restructuring of Wells Fargo Financial means it will no longer originate non-prime portfolio real estate loans. 

FHA home loans, auto loans and credit cards previously offered by Wells Fargo Financial will be consolidated with similar products across the company and will be offered through its network of community banking stores, mortgage stores, phone banks and wellsfargo.com.

Wells Fargo Financial customers with existing consumer loans and clients of the unit’s commercial businesses will continue to be served without disruption. Less than 2 percent of all Wells Fargo’s real estate loans were originated in Wells Fargo Financial stores in the first quarter of 2010.

Wells Fargo said the 2008 merger with Wachovia expanded customer access to the company’s 6,600 Wells Fargo and Wachovia community bank stores and its 2,200 Wells Fargo Home Mortgage locations, eliminating the need for a separate network of Wells Fargo Financial local offices.

“The economics of a separate Wells Fargo Financial channel are no longer viable,” said David Kvamme, president of Wells Fargo Financial. “We know that this decision will be extremely difficult for those dedicated team members and their families who will be affected.”

Kvamme said the company has already identified positions for thousands of Wells Fargo Financial employees and is committed to finding new positions for as many affected team members as possible.

New state rules announced Wednesday, July 7,  by the Iowa Utilities Board will help local governmental units review and approve development of small wind energy projects.

The rules create a state program to simplify and encourage interconnection of  wind generation systems of 100 kilowatts or less  with electric utilities through establishment of “small wind innovation zones.”

The program stems from legislation passed by the Iowa General Assembly in 2009 to help move forward small wind development. A model ordinance for establishing an expedited process for local government to approve small wind generation systems was completed in March 2010.

To be designated as a small wind innovation zone, a political subdivision must either adopt or be within the boundaries of a local government that adopts the model ordinance.

In addition, the political sudvision must be served by a  utility that uses the model interconnection agreements adoped by the Iowa Utilities Board recently. The rules are mandatory for Alliant Energy and MidAmerican Energy, the rate-regulated utilities in Iowa. They are voluntary for municipal utilities, rural electric cooperatives and others that are not rate regulated in Iowa.

The new rules also create a new eligibility category under the state’s renewable energy tax credit program. The program provides qualifying facilities with a state production tax credit of 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

The model ordinance for establishing an expedited local government review process for small wind systems was developed by the Iowa League of Cities, the Iowa State Association of Counties, the Iowa Environmental Council, the Iowa Wind Energy Association, and utility industry representatives.

Small wind innovation zones could be created by cities, counties, townships, school districts, community colleges area education agencies, tribal councils, and Iowa State Board of Regents institutions, among others.

A new Web-based proofreading service, ProofreadingPal.com, has been launched by Web developer Brian Kaldenberg and Greg McLaughlin in Iowa City.

Users upload documents to the web site, where they are proofed by two proofreaders and returned to the author with comments.

ProofreadingPal.com employs proofreaders from throughout North America. Most of them have masters degrees or PhDs, and have backgrounds in education and writing.

Kaldenberg said the unique aspect of the web-based service is that it uses two proofreaders for each document, allowing for better edits and allowing proofreaders to learn from each other.

McLaughlin is a University of Iowa finance graduate who is known to University of Iowa football fans as a former Hawkeye field goal kicker. He oversees hiring of proofreaders.

Kaldenberg moved to Iowa city in 2008. He had the idea for the web site when his wife was finishing her graduate thesis, and they hired a freelance proofreader to help her.

“Locating in Iowa city made perfect sense because of the great access to qualified graduate students and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Kaldenberg said.

The idea for the site came to Kaldenberg while his wife was finishing her graduate thesis. They hired a freelance proofreader to help her.

“I knew this service was in demand and could be offered across the country,” said Kaldenberg. “Locating in Iowa City made perfect sense because of the great access to qualified graduate students and the heralded Writer’s Workshop program.”

Kaldenberg currently operates three web-based services from the Iowa City area: Kaldenberg Consulting, Gamerosters.com and ProofreadingPal.com.